As she waited, Folan realized what she had done--and it was the first time for it--if the people in that shuttle died. She'd killed an innocent. Yes, she was a scientist, and yes, she was military as well. She understood war and killing and their necessary role in the universe. But an innocent--someone just minding his own business ... "Well?"
"We've got one. If there were more ... they're dead."
"Medical team to transporter room." She rushed toward the lift door. "Let's hope whoever it is was the only one. Medric, with me."
Just as they arrived in the transporter room, two security officers--standard procedure--were escorting the man beamed aboard to a waiting area.
"Scan complete," one of them said, then turned and saluted Folan as he noticed her. "Commander, we've done an identity scan. This man's name is--"
"False." The stately-looking man stepped forward and greeted Folan with a nod. "My real name is Spock."
The name was neither unknown, nor without impact. Both Folan and Medric shared a wide-eyed glance.
Medric was the first to speak, presumably when he
realized he was staring. "Guards, put this Vulcan under arrest." He turned to Folan, smiling. "Your fortune continues to multiply."
She raised a hand and the guards stopped stepping toward the Vulcan. "Hold."
Had Medric not been such a self-controlled undercover agent, he might actually have gasped at Folan's counter order. "You--"
"I said hold, yes."
The guards backed off. Medric twitched, so obviously wanting to summon their return.
"Why would you admit what might secure you a death sentence?" Folan asked Spock, somewhat in awe of the legend she had before her.
"Put simply," Spock said, "because the sentence will be death of the galaxy if we do not act now to end the spatial disruptions originating from this system."
"One doesn't engage in discourse with the eaesKj," Medric whispered harshly. Folan was becoming more fatigued with that rasp.
"He's one of the greatest scientific minds of this century and the last," she snapped.
"He's an enemy alien attempting access to a secret scientific base," Medric said, no longer tempering his tone in soft vocal shades.
She turned from Medric to Spock. "Is that true?"
The Vulcan nodded once. "Yes, it is."
"Guards," Medric called again.
"/ said wait!" Folan felt her nostrils flare and a rush of blood making her skin warm and tight with anger.
Again she sought Spock rather than Medric for council. "Are you a threat to my ship, or my command?"
Spock shook his head. "No."
"Surely you won't listen--" Medric tried to interrupt.
"Are you a threat to the Romulan government or Romulan people?" she asked.
"I am not."
She thought on that a moment. "I have your word?"
"You do."
"The myth about Vulcans being unable to lie?" Medric scoffed. "Please tell me you don't believe that."
"No." She sighed and tried to keep her tone level. Partly, she realized, because she wanted Spock to see her as reasonable. "The fact that Vulcans act with honor and logic is enough." She looked to Spock. "Why are you here? Yourself, alone?"
"I came to scan within the area of spatial disruption. I did not expect to be beamed aboard your vessel."
"You came here with Picard?" Medric demanded.
"I did," Spock admitted.
"He can be interrogated later," the centurion said. "I doubt he'll give us useful information without intensive and time-consuming questioning. Since the Enterprise is close, and we have perhaps lost the advantage of surprise, I recommend we return to orbit and see to the repair of the other warbird."
"We have a ... captive from the ship of our enemy and you don't want to interrogate him immediately, no matter how long it takes?" Folan asked.
"We have more pressing needs. I respectfully suggest --"
"I leave you to see to them." Folan waved him off. "Please report to our sister ship and see to the needs of her crew and her captain. Oversee all repairs."
Medric stood unmoving and his expression melted into disbelief. "You're putting me off the ship?"
"I've given you oversight of a pressing need," she said, and had she not been so annoyed with him she might have taken the time to delight in his fluster.
"You need my guidance," he said sharply.
Folan shook her head slowly. "Right now, I need your obedience."
Ponderously, Medric stepped out of the transporter room and toward the shuttle bay. Once he was up the corridor, Folan turned again to her Vulcan guest. "Do you know what's going on?" she asked.
"I have an educated... guess." He didn't seem to like his own choice of words. "I was hoping to see your data."
Her data was minimal, she thought, but what little she did know of concerned her. She tried to reassure herself that the glimpses of information the Tal Shiar had shown her were not as cataclysmic as they seemed, and suggested to herself that there must be something more, something she was missing from the picture because she wasn't allowed to know.
If Spock could provide her with that piece of data and quell her fears ... "I risk much to give you such courtesy," she told him.
"It is appreciated."
She gestured toward the door and as Spock stepped into the hallway she also motioned for the guards to
follow them to the bridge. "What is Picard's plan?" she asked once they were in the turbolift.
"There is no well-structured plan at this point."
Folan shot him a look. She didn't believe that in the least.
"T'sart was supposed to supply information necessary," Spock offered, and Folan interrupted him.
"T'sart," she nearly spat. "You trust him."
"No. But he has provided us with certain information. However, he has also been manipulative and traitorous."
As the lift doors parted, she nodded her acceptance. "That's T'sart."
"Sub-Commander, Medric is on the S'lar," the helmsman informed her.
"Have they finally been able to get above the lower decks there? If so, let me talk to their commander." The helm officer hesitated, his head lowered. "Their commander is dead."
"Ranking officer?" Folan asked.
"Commander... I think you'd better speak with Centurion Medric."
Folan pondered that, and shared an odd and yet somehow familiar glance with Spock.
"Put him through."
Static sizzled across the image as Medric appeared on the main viewer.
Unless she was mistaken, Medric looked pale and scared.
"Medric?" she prodded.
"I--I've never..." He stammered--unlike the well disciplined officer. "The workers here were just breaking
through to the upper decks that had been fused closed as previously reported. We now know why no one had been found below. They all came here. We don't know why. Many of the crew are dead. Most of those have.. . I don't know how to describe it--melded into the bulkheads as if they were beamed into them. Those that remain ... are insane."
Chapter Fourteen
"what could do this?" Sub-Commander Folan sat at the science station of her bridge and pondered the imponderable, with all the great difficulty that implied.
"Many things could," Spock said. "What information have you on this and related phenomena?"
"Just what the Ta--" She caught herself. Not only was she speaking too freely with him, she'd almost told him what could be considered dangerous information for an offworlder to have.
"The Tal Shiar," he finished. "I am aware of the organization. What have they told you?"
Impeded by pangs of disloyalty, Folan hesitated. How could she really trust him? Solely because he was a scientist she admired? Because he was Vulcan and they were supposed to be honorable? Perhaps she was swayed by his flawless use of the Romulan language?
No, surely not. But whatever the reason, what if Medric was right and to listen to
Spock was a mistake?
She'd let her instinct on such matters carry the day before, and doing so had served her well. She decided to do the same again. "That this ... mechanism, whatever it is, the sphere, has amazing power. Power that T'sart wanted control of. They wanted to stop him from taking it."
"They, meaning the Tal Shiar," Spock said. "And they sought to keep such power for themselves."
She ignored that comment and continued. "This is space-time itself being disrupted. Displacement is larger than I've ever seen. Ever heard of."
"This is what causes the dead zones," Spock said, and though he nearly formed it as a question, she knew he was not looking for an answer from her.
"We are the cause, it would seem. Or T'sart was. We are trying to stop it." Folan spoke the words and wondered if she was trying to convince Spock or herself.
"How?" He was talking to her and looking at sensor data at the same time. Amazing, how two races so closely related could be so different in manner. The Vulcans' learned mental discipline was something at which she could marvel.
"I asked how. I asked what specifically was causing this." She motioned to one of the monitors. "That--"
The monitor was a distorted sensor map of a sphere the size of starbase, the mass of a large planet. No other data was listed.
"You are unable to scan within, correct?" Spock asked, as he ran his hands along the computer controls.
He seemed exceedingly familiar with the Romulan control system. Or a very fast learner.
She nodded. "Readings are very garbled. We were lucky to get what cursory information we did."
"It is immense power," Spock said, mostly to himself. "No wonder they all see it as the potential for galactic domination."
"At first I thought T'sart found out about this and sabotaged it. Apparently, he found it, tried to hide it. And when it was taken from him, he tried to destroy it." She motioned with her hand above her, indicating the galaxy in general. "You see the result?"
" "Found' would seem accurate. He could not have created this, or at least there is no evidence to suggest that he could." The Vulcan seemed to be almost losing himself in his own ideas and theories, and yet Folan mused that he was also probably totally aware of everything going on around him. "He didn't create this, so the question is, who did?"
"I was told it came from the gravity well."
"An object--this massive--being pulled out from, and so obviously surviving, a black hole." He paused, looked at her, and one of his brows drew upward. "Fascinating." "What could the purpose of this device be?"
"Unknown." Well, the Vulcan was certainly not afraid to admit when he wasn't sure of a fact.
"But it was T'sart's last action with it that created the power deserts."
Spock nodded, and if that was his acceptance of the fact itself, or the fact that she believed it, Folan was not sure.
"I wanted to investigate if that were the case," Folan said. "I asked to see all the data, but those in charge wanted me here, waiting for the Enterprise." She paused, waited for him to look up at her. "What are your thoughts on all this?"
Amazingly, Spock leaned back and intertwined his fingers in thought as he pondered his answer. "This planet," he began finally, "this system--should not be here. Not this close to a black hole."
She needed to think about that only a moment and then the thought struck her and excited her. "Yes! Exactly! That's what I'd been missing. And that must have been what drew T'sart to this system. He curried his own forces and took over the science installation on the planet, using superior weaponry to subjugate the populace. And then he killed the science administrator who might have helped him the most."
"I would suggest the installation of which you speak is why this system has been kept from the destruction of the black hole," Spock said.
"So the Tal Shiar scientists think, as well. The planet's inhabitants have the technology to do this, but can be conquered so easily?"
"Since we assume the spherical device, as well as the equipment at the installation perhaps, is unlike the rest of then- technology, it is possible they've never studied it enough to duplicate it or learn from it. Look here, and here." He pointed to bits of data on two different screens. "The installation is on the order of several hundred millennia older than the surrounding buildings of this city."
"An ancient civilization's work?" Folan asked. "It does not look like anything we've encountered previously."
"If you'd had, one would assume you'd know better how to use their technology and this might not be a problem at all."
Folan nodded. "And then they could return the sphere into the black hole, and this problem would be over."
"Return it?" Spock's brows shot up in surprise.
"Yes, they've tried, but have been unable." She felt her own brows furrow. "Why? What is wrong? They assume that if this technology on the planet brought it out once, it can do so again."
"If an object of substantial mass enters a black hole, the gravi tic and subspace Shockwave would serialize this and all surrounding star systems."
She sighed. "I know. They have rigged the proper shielding around this complex. It will survive." "But the population--" Spock began.
"Yes. They ... would be forfeit." She frowned deeply. "I don't agree with it," she said. "They've lost { three warbirds attempting to get close enough to the sphere to scan it. They have three left, not including this one and the one Medric is working to repair. There's only enough room to pull off the Romulan personnel--" Folan heard how she sounded, and regretted it. Not because she'd been heard, but because she found herself temporizing for values she never used to hold.
"How have they lost those warbirds?" Spock asked, and the question took her by surprise. She expected > judgment of her morals, and instead got scientific investigation. :
"Spatial forces tear them apart. Each time they do, the disruption of the explosion of the vessel effects the sphere in some way."
"How?"
Folan mostly shrugged. "Long-range scans are very minimally useful. But it is possible that the power deserts coincide with these explosions."
"I'd like to see the data on that."
She punched up a chart to one of the viewers above them. "Here."
With only a minimal glance, Spock seemed to confirm some hypothesis. "Look here, and here."
She read the data, and felt her skin grow clammy.
"This energy wave ... off the scale. It couldn't--"
Spock nodded. "It likely will. Thrusting this much gravimetric disturbance into the black hole could create a subspace black hole."
"That's so hypothetical--a concept only a few theoretical physicists have even dabbled in." Folan rose and began to pace. "No, no--this isn't possible."
"See the data for yourself." He stood as well and directed her toward the console.
"Praetor's robes--" she breathed.
"A subspace black hole," Spock said, "would pull in matter and energy across dimensional levels, and at faster than maximum warp speed."
She pushed off the controls and began pacing again. She ignored the bridge crew, but likely they were watching her. She didn't care. A subspace black hole was one of the most scary concepts in physics--far more frightening than supernovas and matter-antimatter
explosions. If every star in the galactic core exploded at once, the Alpha Quadrant would have time to know it and react. If this black hole became a subspace black hole, then the entire quadrant, perhaps the entire galaxy, could collapse into it in a week's time, with not a ship, not a planet, not a star, escaping its pull. Her mind couldn't wrap around the consequences. "It's ... how can I even comprehend this?"
"The same way you can comprehend such an object as that being pulled from a singularity," Spock offered.
"I... I don't know what we should do."
Spock looked down at her. "We should," he said in his deep voice, "proceed using our rational faculties."
Her chest was heavy. "Easier said," Folan sighed, "
than done."
"Indeed."
Chapter Fifteen
"IF the Tal shiar succeed, we are all dead." Folan wasn't sure just how loud she'd said that, but as she stopped and looked about the bridge, it was obvious she and Spock were the focus of attention.
"Logic suggests you should act to keep that from happening, if your end is the preservation of life." He was so sure of himself. Philosophical axiom flowed from his lips as water from a fountain.
"I am Tal Shiar myself now," she said as she slumped down into the science station chair.
"And so your moral code has changed? You are no longer seeking life as your valued end?"
She sighed. "What is morality anyway?"
"Morality is a code of values which one forms for the purpose of guiding one's life. You must ask your
self, Folan, what are your values, and why?" He sat down quietly beside her. "It was a rhetorical question," she said, "but I'll ask you this: How can I choose to betray all that I know?"
The dark orbs of Spock's eyes pressed down on her and held an equal weight with his words. "Choices are only unnecessary when there are no alternatives to action."
"How can there be an alternative to ray oath?"
"There are always such alternatives," he told her. "Not having a pleasing choice does not mean your path is without option."
She pressed out a breath and gazed at the image of the sphere on the science monitor until her eyes glazed and began to burn. "Medric's ship and mine... we are to destroy the Enterprise. If we cannot, the other three warbirds, when they're finished beaming our troops off the planet, will destroy the Caltiskan science installation."
"To what purpose?" Spock asked.
"They fear T'sart will want to access the installation, and that he is working with the Federation," she murmured.
"There is some validity to that notion."
Folan looked up quizzically. "Why let him near it?"
"Captain Picard hopes to control him, and hopes T'sart can bring an end to the dead zones with some ease."
"He is a harbinger of death, not one who would stop such a thing has this. He does want to control it. But only to his own ends."
"Of course," Spock conceded easily. "But I have a high degree of trust in Captain Picard and his abilities." I
Star Trek - TNG - 63 - Maximum Warp, Book Two Page 10